News & Discussion: Roads & Traffic

[raulduke]

Again with the Heritage - always with the Heritage in the City, and at what cost?

Necessity surely must come before seintimentality.

Underpasses and overpasses, or grade separated interchanges certainly are one answer, but the road needs to be non stop and I am just not convinced that the South Rd proposal is workable.

And I am all for building a plastic City, when can we start?

[talrok]

here is a novel thought. I can't really see some business people taking crammed and dirty public transport to work (say CBD) and leaving their BMW's at home. So I was thinking, do you think that public transport will turn out to be like aviation transport, whereby if you wish to have a better seat (eg. first class, business class) that you pay for it and there is a designated area at the front of the train for this?? This may then encourage some of the 'suits' to take public transport even if only a 30 to 60 minute trip.

If you drive you spend say $12 p/day on carpark and $80 petrol (if coming from far south) .. $140 pw = $28 per day .. a normal bus ticket return is about $6 .. so could the transport companies make a first class area on trains and charge people say $20 per day for this luxury .. its a 30% discount on driving!!

Would this work and is it viable to make such an area on the trains .. could have tray tables for laptops, internet, inbuilt tv's etc.

Maybe a long way away (or not at all viable), but its just a thought!!

[Wayno]

here is a novel thought. I can't really see some business people taking crammed and dirty public transport to work (say CBD) and leaving their BMW's at home. So I was thinking, do you think that public transport will turn out to be like aviation transport, whereby if you wish to have a better seat (eg. first class, business class) that you pay for it and there is a designated area at the front of the train for this?? This may then encourage some of the 'suits' to take public transport even if only a 30 to 60 minute trip.

If you drive you spend say $12 p/day on carpark and $80 petrol (if coming from far south) .. $140 pw = $28 per day .. a normal bus ticket return is about $6 .. so could the transport companies make a first class area on trains and charge people say $20 per day for this luxury .. its a 30% discount on driving!!

Would this work and is it viable to make such an area on the trains .. could have tray tables for laptops, internet, inbuilt tv's etc.

Maybe a long way away (or not at all viable), but its just a thought!!

i believe a system like this was used in the UK for commuter trains. They had 1st class and economy carriages, with the cost obviously being higher for admission to the 1st class carriage - not sure if this approach is still being used though...

[ynotsfables]

Continue building underpasses they're a good idea traffic will flow better especially if South road is traffic light free it will make a hell of a difference.
It also looks neat and to cut a long story short, i believe all the major road works projects that are going ahead at the moment are contributing to major infrastructure improvements that are beneficial.
This is not to say that public transport improvements and freeways should not go ahead, quite on the contrary i believe it will all go ahead in good time.

As for a plastic city if thats what some of you guys want, go live in the Gold coast or Perth this is Adelaide for god sake we have standards here.

[rhino]

here is a novel thought. I can't really see some business people taking crammed and dirty public transport to work (say CBD) and leaving their BMW's at home.

Do you use public transport? There are plenty of these people on it. And the public transport I use (hills buses), while often crammed, is not dirty.

[drsmith]

Freeways don't have to include giant stacks like the Hindmarsh Interchange as shown in the MATS plan. The Narrows Interchange to the west of the Perth CBD is not what I would regard as an ugly structure. While Perth has it's freeways and corridoors reserved for more the planning today is not as freeway nuts as is was at the time of MATS.

I don't know any more about the Causeway or Freeway than you have told us, but I am struck by a couple of aspects of this story that I hope you will agree are worth thinking on.

First, if your suspicion is correct, then they are trying to manage induced demand by making congestion as bad as it was before. Looked at another way, having built the freeway they are arranging for it to have not improved traffic conditions on the Causeway at all. I think that most people would not regard that as the outcome that they want from a major investment in their roads. I use the Causeway and it certainly wasn't what I wanted to see. And if you now say "Ah, but the Freeway itself was still uncongested", then it is there that you should be looking for the effect of induced demand. The freeway (Grahame Farmer Freeway (GFF)) was provided as a new access from the east to the CBD and also as an alternative CBD bypass route to The Causeway/Riverside Drive. The GFF doubled lane capacity from the east to and around the CBD. This is more than what was considered necessary at the time.

Second, I really don't follow why they would need to "encourage drivers to use the new freeway"? Was the simple presence of a brand new freeway not enough? From what you said, there was a drop in the amount of traffic on the Causeway prior to the changes; presumably those people were now on the freeway, why would they encourage more? That goes rather beyond any idea of "induced" behaviour to something more like "compulsion" Since the Causeway is not going to be a solution for congestion on the freeway, just what are they going to do once the freeway is congested too?
The Causeway/Riverside Drive was still a better CBD bypass option than the GFF for too many in the eyes of traffic planners and the easy peak driving conditions on the causeway may have encouraged more to use it as an alternative to bus services.

The GFF itself does experience some peak congestion extra capacity is available by converting the emergency stopping lanes in the tunnels to traffic lanes. This is part of the design and only requires pavement remarking and some additional lighting in the tunnel roof. It is yet to be done.

It would be interesting to see just what the traffic is like in these places. Over here most states' Department of Transport provides live traffic maps and travelling time estimates, is anyone doing that for cities in Australia? Searching didn't seem to bring anything up ...
There's some basic stuff here like camers as selected intersections/freeway points although it's not something I've checked recently.

[adam73837]

...building a eyesore freeway...

That is precisely the attitutde that the Adelaide Public had in the 60's and thanks to them, we are stuck building these things along South Road and left upgrading A17 for a freight route and proposing things like the Northern Connector! The fact that you've said its an 'eyesore' is ridiculous! Go to Melbourne and you see the Bolte Bridge, or travel along the Citylink nice and smoothly, without having to go through crammed suburban roads (which are now not as bad thanks to the Citylink), or go to Perth and what do you see? A city expanding. <Awaits e-slapping for saying that Perth is expanding>

Ooh, ooh, let's be like Perth and rid of all our heritage and build a plastic city

Oh please! Somebody mentions 'freeway' and (as The Joker said;) "Suddenly everyone loses their minds!" Oh and please[/i[ don't tell me that by 'heritage' you don't mean 'the plan that WIlliam Light made 172 years ago that was sufficient at the time, but isn't now and BTW, it won't be rid of'

...go live in the Gold coast or Perth this is Adelaide for god sake we have standards here...

Standards! Standards! Stanards!

[AG]

here is a novel thought. I can't really see some business people taking crammed and dirty public transport to work (say CBD) and leaving their BMW's at home. So I was thinking, do you think that public transport will turn out to be like aviation transport, whereby if you wish to have a better seat (eg. first class, business class) that you pay for it and there is a designated area at the front of the train for this?? This may then encourage some of the 'suits' to take public transport even if only a 30 to 60 minute trip.

If you drive you spend say $12 p/day on carpark and $80 petrol (if coming from far south) .. $140 pw = $28 per day .. a normal bus ticket return is about $6 .. so could the transport companies make a first class area on trains and charge people say $20 per day for this luxury .. its a 30% discount on driving!!

Would this work and is it viable to make such an area on the trains .. could have tray tables for laptops, internet, inbuilt tv's etc.

Maybe a long way away (or not at all viable), but its just a thought!!

This idea is already at work in Japan and Hong Kong. They have what they call "green cars" in which an additional fare must be paid on top of the normal fare. It works because the number of people using those lines is enormous and the seats in the green cars offer far better conditions for the seat and crowding that often is seen on these networks. These trains are between 12-15 cars long depending on the line, and even then they only are able to support 1 or 2 such cars on each train to be viable, they are often rather empty outside peak hour.

[Norman]

...building a eyesore freeway...

That is precisely the attitutde that the Adelaide Public had in the 60's and thanks to them, we are stuck building these things along South Road and left upgrading A17 for a freight route and proposing things like the Northern Connector! The fact that you've said its an 'eyesore' is ridiculous! Go to Melbourne and you see the Bolte Bridge, or travel along the Citylink nice and smoothly, without having to go through crammed suburban roads (which are now not as bad thanks to the Citylink), or go to Perth and what do you see? A city expanding. <Awaits e-slapping for saying that Perth is expanding>

Sure, might be nice for the drivers from the sprawls, but not such a nice view for the people living near the city. We don't have freeway reserves like Perth do, I'm simply opposing raised freeways that would go through the suburbs. THAT is an eyesore. In Perth and most of the other cities, the reserves are there already, so they can be lowered or stay on ground level without much cost and without being an eyesore. And I doubt the government will buy too many properties around the city (which are worth almost 1/2 million each these days) to make a reserve for a freeway. The only way we can go is underground, but that too would be expensive.

Ooh, ooh, let's be like Perth and rid of all our heritage and build a plastic city

Oh please! Somebody mentions 'freeway' and (as The Joker said;) "Suddenly everyone loses their minds!" Oh and please[/i[ don't tell me that by 'heritage' you don't mean 'the plan that WIlliam Light made 172 years ago that was sufficient at the time, but isn't now and BTW, it won't be rid of'

Whenever I see Perth, I see a city with no character and no culture. Sure, I haven't been there yet, but I have this feeling that Perth is like a mini-Dubai, that is, they ride off the resources boom, but have no actual culture. According to friends I have there, the city is dead after 5pm. At least here we have plenty of nightlife, cafes and restaurants that continue to hold a population after work hours.

[drsmith]

Whenever I see Perth, I see a city with no character and no culture. Sure, I haven't been there yet, but I have this feeling that Perth is like a mini-Dubai, that is, they ride off the resources boom, but have no actual culture. According to friends I have there, the city is dead after 5pm. At least here we have plenty of nightlife, cafes and restaurants that continue to hold a population after work hours.

The previous state government were also thinking of Dubai.

http://www.perthwaterfront.com.au/index.php

That lot were booted out at the recent election and the end of the resources boom has put paid to anything like that.

I can't comment on nightlife, it's not my scene but the shoping hours are crap. Nice freeways though.

[TooFar]

Adam when will you realise that freeways are a 1950's experiment that has been found not to work in the long run? Most major cities are reducing and consolidating freeways rather than expanding them. Also you can't just "add another lane" at will. Very few trips in Adelaide go outside of two N-S quartiles, so we don't need great carved freeways, we need to concentrate on short hop inter-suburban travel for cars. PT can relieve the radial and cross town peak period rush, and for those who need to make obtuse journeys, the road system works fine.

You're focusing on relieving the symptoms, instead of the finding the cure.

Only a conservative nimby living in Adelaide would say that. How are they found wanting? I don’t think anyone is saying that Freeways are the total solution, but they are an integral part of the complete transportation system of a modern city.

What cities are reducing their freeways? Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney. They are the major cities in Australia. You are just talking rubbish without providing any facts at all. :wank:

I drive on a freeway every day of my life. They are great. Sure there is some congestion at times but the benefits far out way the negatives. I don’t think you would find many people where I live wanting to remove the freeways and install traffic lights.

You are focusing on fantasy and not reality. Remember Australia is not Europe, our cities have far more in common with North American cities. It is just Adelaide f*cked it up. Built a NA type low density city but did not provide sufficient transport options.

[Norman]

But who is to say we need to be like the rest of Australia, we should stand out and make use of more sustainable development concepts such as TODs and high-density living close to the city. Don't see the lack of a freeway as a simple constraint, see it as a constraint that enables us to rethink our planning ways and provide something different to the status qua.

[Professor]

The Dunstan government came into power and scrapped the MATS plan, which would have been a really good asset and would have enabled our traffic to flow much better than it does now.

But yes - we can lead australia yet again - like we did with a stupid one-way reversing road, or the O Bhan. The world is just waiting for Adelaide to show it the way, but while they wait they build infrastructure.
Anyway, we will have plenty of time to think through different solutions - while we are sitting in a gridlock because the roads are inadequate.

Adelaide needs much better infrastructure, roads, flyovers, urban consolidation and less red tape. Look at the really positive difference the underpass at Mile-end made. We should have 10 of those under construction around the city to ease congestion, save time and fuel and reduce unnecessary waiting. And we need jobs and opportunities for young people as well as good logistics so that our minerals and manufacturing can be most efficient. Logistics ties into many positive economic development.

Get the bulldozers out and widen / rebuild / create some good infrastructure in this town and State. Brrrmmmm...

[Prince George]

Only a conservative nimby living in Adelaide would say that. How are they found wanting? I don’t think anyone is saying that Freeways are the total solution, but they are an integral part of the complete transportation system of a modern city.

What cities are reducing their freeways? Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney. They are the major cities in Australia. You are just talking rubbish without providing any facts at all. :wank:

I drive on a freeway every day of my life. They are great. Sure there is some congestion at times but the benefits far out way the negatives. I don’t think you would find many people where I live wanting to remove the freeways and install traffic lights.

You are focusing on fantasy and not reality. Remember Australia is not Europe, our cities have far more in common with North American cities. It is just Adelaide f*cked it up. Built a NA type low density city but did not provide sufficient transport options.

How funny to see you saying that "only a conservative nimby living in Adelaide would say that", when we are each living in the part of the world where the anti-freeway crowd are the progressive liberal set. Now you've given me an identity crisis, I must be some sort of a progressocon nimberal or something.

Earlier this month, Philadelphia (your current digs, yes?) was host to a major conference Reimagining cities: urban design after the age of oil. Not many speakers there were talking on the manifold benefits of freeways. That link, by the way, is from the magazine Next American City likewise published in Philly. You'll hardly find any positive stories on freeways there, although the cover story this month is "A new era for train travel?" ("Is this Amtrak’s moment to shine and usher in a new era of train travel?"). Evidentally, they are all unimpressed by the same freeways that you are driving on.

Frankly, I find it hard to get excited about freeways (not in a positive sense, anyway) when I get caught in a real jam, such as on Thursday last week, when my evening commute was much like this guy's. That's 45 minutes to travel about 6 km on a road with a 100km/h limit, and the buses are in the HOV lane.

As for rejecting freeways, there are two ways that happens. The obvious way is when an existing freeway is removed, as has happened in the past with the Embarcadero in SF, the East River freeway in NYC, and as I hope ultimately happens to Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct. But these were all forced by events, they had become unsound. Even clearer is the voluntary demolition of the Cheonggyecheon Motorway in Seoul. The success of that project now has cities like Shanghai and Tokyo contemplating the same option. And if you want an American example, you could try Milwaukee, WI, who demolished the Park East Freeway. Or, even closer to home, Sydney is considering demolishing the Cahill Expressway.

The less obvious rejection is when the transit budget is changed to reduce investment in freeways. That's harder to spot, but it's happening right across America right now. Pick any place that's chosen to start building rail or BRT - the money that they're spending on transit is money that they chose not to spend on roads. Not so long ago, that was unthinkable.

Yes, urban planners (or lack thereof) of previous generations have left us with a host of problems. I say that the right course of action is to solve their mistakes and not to legitimise them by tacking on dated concepts of transport and city-dom.

A lot of people talk about our lack of freeways as if it's a mark of backwardness; I want to make a blessing out of adversity, to change the debate from us being trapped in the past to being the city of the future that skipped the middle phase. My dream would be to see Adelaide become the first post-oil city: Adelaide - The City Without A Freeway. I want us to be the city that they talk about at urban design conferences. "If Adelaide can do it, then so can we" they would say. That, I believe, would be a much more significant outcome for us all.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a bike to ride and a bus to catch.


PS - as a neat little denoument for this diatribe, I rode out of the house 10 minutes after the bus that I used to catch left, and I beat it to the freeway. The poor thing was stuck in traffic, the queue of cars waiting to turn onto the SR-520 stretched back almost half a mile.

[TooFar]

I actually live about 30 miles from Downtown Philly and work about 10 miles away. I do not venture Downtown too often. In not sure about Washington state but south eastern Pennsylvania is a multitude of communities. Very different to Adelaide which is very centralized. It was very odd when I first moved here to see very large office parks in what appears to be the middle of nowhere. But the benefit to this decentralized system is the amount of natural landscape that has been preserved. The downside is that greater Philly spans over thousands of square kms and the only real way to get around is by car.

I too get frustrated on Freeways, I have been stuck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike for over 2 hours once without moving an inch. And you should see the New Jersey Turnpike on a summer Sunday – one word – Gridlock. It happens, and it sucks. However for most of the time when I drive, the road is flowing and I get where I want with minimum of fuss – it’s great. The benefits of living in an area where there are over 40 Million people within a 2 hour radius, and yet so much natural beauty, far out way the negatives. Sure transport options could be better, but at least I have an option.

The problem with Adelaide is there are no options. If you need to transport goods from Elizabeth to Noarlunga, you need to stop at 40 odd sets of traffic lights. Should B-doubles really be rolling down residential streets like South or Marion Road? If you are a tradesman living in Port Adelaide yet have a job in the Hills, how many set of light do you need to negotiate? What does that lost time cost? It is pathetic to think that Adelaide calls is self a modern prosperous city, yet has third world standard roads.

I would love to see some high density living around PT hubs. But it is not going to happen any time soon for a number of reasons. First and foremost Adelaide is just not growing fast enough. Second, trying to build any mid (or God forbid, High) rise developments in the suburbs will never happen, to many NIMBY’s. Look at Marion when they added the 6 storey office tower, why do you think there has been no siblings added? Yet Marion would be the perfect place for mid to high density housing. You are all fooling yourself to think that in some near future, Adelaide will be a model city with pockets of HD accommodation centered around PT links. It aint gonna happen.

If Adelaide does not bite the bullet and plan for a full length north-south freeway now, then the city will only fall further behind its competitors.